Today I woke up at 5 again. Something must really be wrong with me. Maybe it's this cold I've come down with. I'm trying my best to fight it so that I can be at full strength for the class and enjoying the island. I went to the library after I woke up and read for a bit because the sun wasn't even close to coming up. Once the light started coming down, I went for a walk along the beach. We have a challenge to pick up trash and plastic since our cook, Pat, does it in his free time. Since it was early morning, I had first picks of trash and I found some rope and bottle caps to add to the pile of plastic and trash. I made it to Shark Bay on the opposite side of the island and saw some stingrays chilling in the bay. I love stingrays and they will come up again in a bit. On my way back to the station, I saw 18 guitar sharks chilling together (refer to picture of just a few of them). That was pretty cool, I have never seen so many sharks hanging out together. We had breakfast and then a lecture about fish and then tea time. Tea time is great, I can't find a better reason to stop everything and make some tea and eat a muffin as a morning break. Lunch came around and after lunch we went for a snorkel in the outer reefs. It is a lot deeper and there are tons of fish out there. It was amazing to see so many fish and so many different kinds of fish. You can't breathe through your nose while snorkeling so it kind of sucked having my mask fill up with snot so I stopped snorkeling early and hung out at the boat. I really enjoy being on a boat and feeling the waves move you back and forth, it reminds me of boating with my family on lakes. Good memories and times. After the snorkel, it started to rain. What kind of tropical paradise is this? Anyways, the rain only stuck around for a bit so working on research in the lab made the rain no problem. We have to do a project we design so research and creation of that has begun. I am working with cat and we both love rays so we decided to do something with them. We settled on looking at the abundance and type of rays in Shark bay at different tide stages. This would help us understand the behavior of rays and when they like to come close to the shore to chill and when they like to go out into the deeper parts of the ocean and feed. The title of today's post comes from the constant food I have been eating. Pat makes giant meals and I constantly gorge on as much as I can each meal. I don't have a weight scale, but I think I am finally getting somewhere on the cold protection.
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I guess I don't have to put the date because this site auto puts it there. Kind of messes up my blog mojo because that isn't how I imagine it in my mind. "The day is the 31st of May, 2019. I fought the waves of Poseidon as the winds blew hard from the North. Many were lost." Whatever. Today, I woke up at 5 am naturally (for those of you who know me, this isn't right. I sleep until the sun has been up for a while). I feel like I have lost my childhood since I can't sleep in now. I got up and walked in the pitch black to the kitchen and made some tea and grabbed a muffin. I sat and drank tea until 6 am when Edd, the professor, came walking down the dirt path. From now on, morning snorkels will be taking place at 6:15 am and are optional. The snorkel is what I was waiting for but I didn't know if it would happen since there was a raging wind coming in and visibility in the ocean would be nothing. Edd decided we should try anyways and we went for a snorkel. The visibility was absolute trash, so we got out of the ocean after 15 minutes because the waves were white topping. Grand start to the day. Breakfast was good of course and then we had lecture. Today we had a lab where we took sediment cores from the ocean floor. The wind was still going strong so coring was easy as pie. I lied, the wind made everything nice and cold but since the depth we were at wasn't too deep, it wasn't too bad. We analyzed the samples at the lab which brought back memories because we were sorting bugs in the sediment cores. My job in college for nearly two years was sorting bugs and it got pretty boring looking through a microscope. Lunch happened and then it was back to microscope work. Did some statistics, wrote a report, and then went for a near-night snorkel. Again, it was freezing but this time the visibility was good. I saw some baby black tipped reef sharks and a large black tipped reef shark. One of my favorites was also up and about, the moon wrasses. I saw a sailfin tang which is pretty cool to see in the water, they are so thin and tall. A green turtle decided to come near us and come up to the surface to see what was going on. Great snorkel session tonight. I was snorkeling while the sunset happened so I missed it but I caught all the nice colors and dying light as I walked back into camp. Late last night I went star gazing because there is no light pollution and I am in the southern hemisphere so it is a whole different sky. I could see the end of the Milky Way spiral and tons of stars, it was amazing. Some of the pictures for today were from last night since I went to bed right after. The red light pic is from us being on the pier and seeing a loggerhead turtle. These things are gigantic and we didn't want to blind him so we only used red light. It gets so dark at night since there is no lights that you can only see your outline when your eyes fully adjust. The good side of that is that the stars are delightful. I might go on more walks and less snorkels to really get that island life feel, especially since I am so skinny and freeze in the water. Pat's cooking is helping me gain the girth I need to survive but it won't be quick enough so save my butt from the cold waters. Heron really is something you can only experience by doing and it is amazing. I love it here and I am thankful for my parents and their support and helping me go on this trip. Love you mom and dad. 30th of May. Today I did a snorkel session at the rise of the sun, which is 6:15 am here. It was surprisingly warm in the water and there was a ton of things to see. The harbor is place where lots of fish like to hang out but we obviously can't snorkel the harbor while ships are going in and out so we can only go in before 8 am and after 5 pm. We did our morning snorkel in the harbor and saw tons of cow head stingrays, parrot fish, and even some black tipped reef sharks. I also saw an eagle ray off in the distance but it was much faster than me so it disappeared into the haze of the ocean. If you look up a picture of Heron Island, you will most likely see that there is a shipwreck in the harbor. This ship is pretty easy to swim into and check out so I did this morning. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything super cool hiding in there. There was a ton of green turtles everywhere, I saw close to 20 myself. I also saw a wobbegong under a shelf which we had to dive down to see. Check them out, they are pretty cool. It was a good snorkel session this morning. After the snorkel, we had breakfast and then a lecture on corals. You would think corals are semi-easy to learn about but there is actually a lot of different types of coral and the history on corals is interesting. The coral we know today is actually only 100 million years old and before that, coral was different species entirely. The lecture ended about a hour before lunch so I decided to see how long it took to walk around the entire island. I grabbed a class mate and we set out. It took about 45 minutes to go around the whole island at a slow pace. There is a nice resort at one end of the island which we are forbidden to enter because we are dirty students that probably smell horrible since we are wet most of the day from swimming and snorkeling. To walk around the island, you have to pass this resort so instead we have to take a bit of a shortcut behind the resort once you reach a certain point that takes you back to the research station. Lunch was great, Pat is an awesome cook. Our first lab happened after lunch and we did some surveying of the surrounding coral and cover types in the lagoon where Heron island sits. Luckily, we didn't have to get completely immersed so it was easy to see what kind of cover there was and record it for analysis later. Cat makes fun of me for always looking like I don't want to take a selfie and she is right.
For those of you coming from my blog about my time in Sydney, welcome. To those who know nothing about it, it might be worth a read: https://sites.google.com/view/sams-blog-for-australia/home 29th of May. Today I traveled from Gladstone to Heron Island. The ferry was about two hours long and it was really calm waters, which I have heard is unusual. I was kind of hoping to see someone vom just to be like, "yeah, I don't get sea sick, I don't even take Dramamine!" Anyways, the ferry was smooth and we arrived at Heron Island without anybody getting sick. First impressions of Heron, seems really big at first and then as you walk around a couple times, it feels just right. When I say just right, I mean it isn't too big of an island that you get lost but it isn't too small where you can go tip to tip in five minutes so it gets boring. There are tons of birds, all over the place. This has lead to the title of today's post. The birds non-stop yell, no joke it will become a way of life and it will be weird when I leave Heron to not be constantly hearing it. We got settled in our rooms which are bunk style like the hostels but they gave us four rooms, two for the ladies and two for the guys. As a group of 13 students, this isn't horrible but the rooms are pretty dang big. Like 8 beds big. I guess four of the guys really want to hear each other snore and took one room so me and another guy took the other room. I am pretty down for two guys having a huge room and six other beds to pile our stuff on so I didn't complain. After unpacking, we met as a class for lunch and then after lunch I went on a walk with a classmate along the beach. We happened to see some chitons and some guitar sharks which are pretty bizarre. The walk ended when we had to return to the research station for a lecture on safety and rules around the island. We decided during the lecture that we wanted to get right into the ocean and do a snorkel session. We got our gear (including wet suits, it does get a bit chilly in the water even though we have a giant lagoon), buddied up, and got snorkeling. There are tons of fish. So many different kinds of fish! My highlights during this snorkel were two eels and a moon wrasse (look them up, they are sweet). There are over 50 species of fish and coral all around Heron so I won't name everything, but I will be naming some of my top picks that you can look up and be like, "oh yeah, bet that is cool in the water." Some other things to name that are swimming around out there are parrot fish, whitetail dascyllus, long finned goby, spanish flag snappers, and of course turtles! There are three kinds around Heron Island. There are the green turtles, the hawksbill, and the loggerhead. While on the dock, I also saw a black tipped reef shark and a spotted eagle ray. The day wound down by watching the sunset off the deck and dinner. Since Heron Island is in the tropics, the sun moves a bit quicker and the sunset from the sun touching the horizon to gone happened in a couple of minutes. Some of you may be like, "doesn't that always happen?" No, it doesn't. Watch the sunset and you will be like, "wow, it takes its sweet time going down." After the sunset, there was a bit of resting before heading to dinner which our local chef, Pat, is amazing at making. That concludes my first day on Heron and I honestly think I will enjoy being on the island more than in the water. Seeing all I can (birds, land features, and things on the beach) and wandering around is one of my favorite things to do. I love looking out over the water and seeing all sorts of stuff and the fish being natural out in the water. Don't get me wrong, snorkeling is cool but I am more of a breathe air instead of salt water kind of guy and inhaling salt water comes with every snorkel session. |
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About MeI am the guy whose name is on the top there. I am a student who graduated with a BA from USU this year and finally gave in to Dr. Atwood's pestering to go on her Heron Island Class for coral reefs. People often call me really sassy and unhappy. What they don't know is that my resting face is angry, but I am usually pretty happy. ArchivesCategories |